Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) eBook

A similar suggestion of antiquity is unmistakably
embodied in the deer masks, as well as in the heads
with antlers attached, which the same men also may
wear.

During Easter week live rattlesnakes are carried about,
but the heads of the reptiles are tied together so
that they can do no harm. One man may have as
many as four serpents with him.

Chapter XIX

Plant-worship—­Hikuli—­Internal
and External Effects—­Hikuli both
Man and God—­How
the Tarahumares Obtain the Plant, and where They
Keep It—­The Tarahumare
Hikuli Feast—­Musical Instruments—­Hikuli
Likes Noise—­The
Dance—­Hikuli’s Departure in the Morning—­Other
Kinds of Cacti Worshipped—­“Doctor”
Rubio, the Great Hikuli
Expert—­The Age
of Hikuli Worship.

To the Indian, everything in nature is alive.
Plants, like human beings, have souls, otherwise they
could not live and grow. Many are supposed to
talk and sing and to feel joy and pain. For instance,
when in winter the pine-trees are stiff with cold,
they weep and pray to the sun to shine and make them
warm. When angered or insulted, the plants take
their revenge. Those that are supposed to possess
curative powers are venerated. This fact, however,
does not save them from being cut into pieces and
steeped in water, which the people afterward drink
or use in washing themselves. The mere fragrance
of the lily is supposed to cure sickness and to drive
off sorcery. In invoking the lily’s help
the shaman utters a prayer like this:

("Beautiful lily, in bloom this morning, guard me!
Drive away sorcery! Make me grow old! Let
me reach the age at which I have to take up a walking-stick!
I thank thee for exhaling thy fragrance there, where
thou art standing!”)

High mental qualities are ascribed especially to all
species of Mammilaria and Echinocactus,
small cacti, for which a regular cult is instituted.
The Tarahumares designate several varieties as hikuli,
though the name belongs properly only to the kind most
commonly used by them. These plants live for
months after they have been rooted up, and the eating
of them causes a state of ecstasy. They are therefore
considered demi-gods, who have to be treated with great
reverence, and to whom sacrifices have to be offered.

The principal kinds thus distinguished are known to
science as Lophophora Williamsii and Lophophora
Williamsii, var. Lewinii. In the United
States they are called mescal buttons, and in Mexico
peyote. The Tarahumares speak of them as
the superior hikuli (hikuli waname), or simply hikuli,
they being the hikuli par excellence.